


At Joe's (The Leave No Man Behind Remix)

by kinetikatrue



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Dubious Consent, Multi, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes believing that things can get better is enough to make them better. Or: John's about to find out that sometimes the only way out is in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Joe's (The Leave No Man Behind Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seratonation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seratonation/gifts).
  * Inspired by [At Joe's](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/49586) by seratonation. 



It’s not very loud, but the pop and hiss of a seal being broken, followed by the hum of Ancient machinery setting to work, gets Rodney’s attention in an instant. It has him looking up, trying not to get his hopes up – and abandoning the terminal where he’s been calculating the odds of the device that’s taken an inconvenient shine to Major Sheppard and his stupidly alluring ATA gene this time deciding to release him before Rodney manages to figure out what it does and disable it. It may be an ultimately pointless piece of math, but it breaks up his so far futile search of the database – and that takes it from pointless to priceless. The only definitive piece of information guiding said search is that this one involves what he can only call _pod-chairs_. Which are the bastard love-child of a recliner and a stasis pod.

Someday Rodney is going to stop underestimating the Ancients when it comes to their ability to dream up ever weirder shit.

The point is that years of working in labs have left him trained to lock on to the sound of an unexpected seal break in an otherwise empty room like a bloodhound catching the scent. And today there’s one particular pod-chair’s seal he’s really hoping will break. So he’s paying full attention to the pod-chair that has just opened as it returns to its original upright and locked position. The odds clearly aren’t inclined to break in his favor, though: the person emerging from the pod-chair is a blonde. And while he can recognize that it’s not Cadman’s fault she’s not Sheppard, that doesn’t stop him grumbling at her, “Do you at least have anything useful to tell me?”

It’s mostly for appearances, anyway – ever since they swapped bodies, she’s been impervious to his insults and grumbling.

And, yep, she’s smirking cheerfully as she reports, “It’s a VR set-up, or something that looks an awful lot like one, anyway. And the only thing that might be in danger’s his liver - if the beer were real; he’s moping around some dive ‘seeking solace in the bottle’,” hops out of the pod, and tugs her shirt back into place. “Didn’t recognize me; did try and proposition me – did I mention he’s drunk? Plus, I’m in civvies.” 

She’s wearing a t-shirt promoting what Rodney thinks is a band, with jeans and her uniform boots, the result of being off-duty when she’d wandered by and gotten roped into being a one Marine reconnaissance team, tasked with trying to find out what Sheppard had gotten himself into this time and whether he was in any danger. Rodney’s mostly accepted that when there’s the potential for his brain to get stuck on the wrong side of a piece of Ancient tech, the best plan is to start by sending somebody else in while he wrangles the tech from outside. He may not like it, but he’s going to have to live with it until he figures out how to be two places at the same time.

Figuring that out is absolutely on his list of projects to get back to once life in the Pegasus Galaxy is a little more stable, though.

Cadman’s gone on talking while Rodney got sidetracked thinking about how much more he could get done if he _could_ be in two places at the same time; when he tunes back in, she’s saying, “It’s a good thing for him that I know he’d never have done it if he’d known who I was – and that he understands that ‘no’ means ‘no’.” Her expression suggests she’s got no problem kicking guys who don’t in the balls.

Rodney nods and says, “Yeah, he’s good for that,” because for all that Sheppard will flirt with anything that moves, he keeps it professional with his subordinates – and, if anything, he always seems surprised when women actually express interest. Rodney’s only devoting maybe a quarter of his attention to Cadman and her feelings concerning being propositioned by her superior, though – the rest of it’s moved on to figuring out the implications of her report and what needs to happen next.

The big thing seems to be that Sheppard can’t just decide to leave whenever he wants, like they could on the Aurora - and he’s not any happier about it than he was about being stuck in the Valley of the Ancients; Rodney’s not looking forward to reporting any of that to Elizabeth.

***

Four hours later, the pod-chair room’s gotten a little more crowded – and they’ve broken out a small keg of homebrew and a few bottles of Ruus. Rodney’s back at the terminal, combing through the database for mentions of virtual reality type set-ups, beer at his elbow. Zelenka’s poking at whatever parts of the device he can reach via its access panels. Ronon and Cadman are sitting next to the pod-chair that still has its grip on Sheppard, playing some card game that seems to involve shots and ridiculous bets. And Teyla’s sitting at a table, taking careful notes – across from their most recent volunteer for the Get Sheppard the Fuck Out of There Campaign.

Getting volunteers to enter the VR world has not been a problem – probably, Rodney thinks, because it comes with the opportunity to comfort their very own Captain Kirk, Atlantis’s handsome and charming military commander; people are so predictable. 

Rodney started tuning the debriefings out after the first few, though, since it was the same story every time, despite the people in question supposedly being the best of the best in their respective fields: the volunteer turned up at the bar, tried to talk to Sheppard, ended up back at his place sooner or later, ‘got to know him’ a bit better, bailed out as soon as he went to sleep afterwards – and came back to them to report exactly that. The details don’t change much – and neither does Sheppard’s status: stuck in a two-setting VR simulation for reasons they’ve so far been unable to determine.

What they have learned so far can be summed up as: Sheppard’s depressed; he’s self-medicating with alcohol and sex; he hasn’t recognized any of the expedition members who’ve turned up at his bar; he doesn’t seem interested in talking about anything of substance - but even knowing all of that, they aren’t any closer to figuring out why he can’t leave.

When Rodney accidentally tunes back in just in time to hear the volunteer tell Teyla that she went back to Sheppard’s apartment with him, he snorts and lets loose with, “And the sex was as great as always, yada, yada – you can spare us the details unless they’re actually relevant.”

Heidi? Or is it Haley? Or Holly? Or Helen? – Rodney isn’t the one taking notes on Sheppard’s virtual sexual escapades and he refuses to devote any unnecessary attention to the other people involved in them unless they do something useful – a curly-haired redhead, shrugs and says, “Who wouldn’t sleep with John Sheppard if he offered?””

In this respect, Rodney has to admit to also being predictable. He doesn’t think it’ll ever be a possibility - the evidence suggests that Sheppard just doesn’t swing that way - but if it were, yeah, he’d find himself giving in eventually. Or – who’s he kidding – not so eventually. Rodney’s not picky – and signs point to sex being another of the things Sheppard’s highly fucking competent at (pun entirely intended). He’s not about to say any of that out loud, though.

Particularly not when Zelenka has just poked his head back out from the guts of the VR machine to snort and say, “Me. I would not.”

But Rodney really would – the longer Sheppard remains trapped (and so what if it’s only been a few hours; time ran faster in the Valley of the Ancients - who’s to say it doesn’t in Sheppard’s dumb bar, as well?), the more Rodney’s started to feel like he might be losing his chance at not just having sex with Sheppard, but a lot of other things, as well. And all the sex Sheppard _is_ having is just making those feelings hit home in a way that they hadn’t during any of the other life-threatening situations he’s had to extricate Sheppard from. 

It’s also exactly the right kind of motivation to get him redoubling his efforts at digging through the database for answers. 

Just as Rodney’s about to turn back to the terminal and do exactly that, the redhead whose name he still doesn’t know cuts back in to say, “I did notice something interesting about his bedroom, though – there wasn’t much sign that anybody actually lived there.”

“Nobody does actually live there.”

“I know, I know – but you’d think that if he was imagining this apartment for himself, he’d make it someplace he actually wanted to live. And this place looks like its only important functions are providing a place to store his golf clubs and giving him somewhere to sleep.” The implied ‘and fuck’ is clear without her ever saying a word.

Rodney rolls his eyes and tells her, “Nope,” not bothering to elaborate on what’s suddenly become obvious to him: that, no – no, you would not expect anything of the sort. This maybe should have been obvious from the start, but whatever – he’s now absolutely certain that it’s not just that being stuck in the VR is making Sheppard depressed; it’s that the VR, itself, is meant to be a place of sadness and fear Not quite Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – as far as Rodney knows, Sheppard hasn’t also decided to go in for a terrible, depressing exploration of hallucinogens – but he does have a terrible, depressing apartment because it goes with his terrible, depressing drinking habit and terrible, depressing string of meaningless hook-ups and, presumably, his terrible, depressing job. 

Unfortunately that doesn’t get them any closer to knowing why – or coming up with a way to get Sheppard out. And the only way Rodney can think of to get those answers involves yet more endless slogging through seemingly nonsensical database entries.

***

“This had better be important,” are the first words out of Rodney’s mouth when he emerges from the VR pod. Followed by, “Nobody told me the bartender was _Joe_.”

Teyla looks up from going over the stack of notes with Cadman and asks, “Were we supposed to know this was a significant piece of information?”

And, no, Rodney supposes, Teyla wasn’t, She’s never been to Palo Alto, could never have guessed that Sheppard had only taken up virtual residence in Rodney’s favorite bar from his Post-Doc stint at SLAC. And the choice of bar might not actually be significant at all, at least not in the specific, though every single instinct he has is standing up and shouting that the bar being located near _Stanford_ does mean something. He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything except, “Does nobody bother to learn the names of bartenders anymore?” Rodney’s found it’s the only way to guarantee that his drinks don’t come garnished with death – plus, yelling at the incompetent ones is so much more effective when you bring their names into things.

“They’ve been focusing on John,” Teyla says, tone deceptively mild.

And while Rodney can’t actually argue with that as a priority – Sheppard _is_ the point of everything they’re doing here - it’s a good thing they have him around to make up for the deficiencies of everybody else’s reports. Like the inexcusable lack of Joe.

Other things, like how Sheppard actually seemed to mean the flirting, are going to get left out. For everybody’s good.

He’s not quite sure what he’d been expecting from visiting the bar – or well, he does; he’s paid attention to enough of the debriefings to know how the outline goes, but turns out? It got a lot of things wrong. Starting with: no, Cadman, it _isn’t_ a dive, just a bar that caters to grad students, post-docs, young professors, and enterprising undergrads who prefer a little picking up with their conversation to a little conversation with their picking up. And that, for all that it’s practically the basis of the outline, Sheppard’s single-minded pursuit of sex and alcohol might serve any useful purpose. 

That bullshit isn’t getting them _anywhere_. 

And no matter what he’d thought beforehand, he hadn’t been prepared for it. For Sheppard, sitting on a stool at the bar, glass of beer in front of him. How he’d somehow seemed even skinnier, no uniform in sight. The defeated expression on his face and the blankness behind his eyes had been even worse, hitting Rodney like a punch to the gut when he’d turned to look Sheppard’s way after finishing up with Joe..

He doesn’t report any of that to Teyla, either, just tells her, “We talked for a while – about my work, mostly. Wormholes.” He’d trotted out the ‘mostly theoretical’ line he used around people who didn’t have the clearance to know better and Sheppard had nodded and asked all the right, interested questions – and showed no sign that he’d ever even heard of them, much less become an old hand at using them for intergalactic travel. “He thinks he lives in Palo Alto.”

Cadman connects the dots on that, asks, “He’s at Stanford?”

Rodney shakes his head, “He did undergrad there…I think he just stayed, after.” Rodney’s never considered doing that, always wanted to just move on to the next big thing - but he can see Sheppard choosing California. Even if it doesn’t seem to be making him very happy in this virtual life he’s been living.

“What’s he doing there, then?” That’s Cadman, again, clearly intent on getting Rodney telling her everything he knows about the subject.

Unfortunately for her, all Rodney has to say on the subject is, “Who the hell knows – we never actually got around to talking about him, probably because he didn’t want to.” Which is par for the course – Sheppard can out-stubborn just about anybody when he doesn’t feel like talking about something. Which reminds him, “Why’d I get called out of the simulation, anyway?” 

Teyla answers, then, tells him, “Elizabeth wants you to go report in person, since he’s been in there for six hours and we still don’t know how to get him out.”

Rodney throws up his hands, but refrains from shouting, “There’s not much more to report than what she already knows: we don’t know how to get him out, what the simulator’s purpose was – or even much more about it than that it _is_ some kind of VR simulator. We’re trying to fix all of those problems, but the Ancients were weird assholes who never met a sane organization scheme they wanted anything to do with.” Teyla’s expression makes him backtrack a little with, “Sorry. Whatever, Elizabeth can have her report, I’ll be back when I’m done with this exercise in futility. Call me if anything changes.” 

And then he’s out the door, off to reassure Elizabeth that, no, nothing’s changed that she hasn’t heard about. And, yes, they will have Sheppard out of there as soon as possible.

***

By the time Rodney gets back from criss-crossing the city, Ronon’s reemerged from the simulation. The first thing he says when he sees Rodney is, “Man, what’d you do to him?“ And he’s not saying it, but the look on his face clearly means ‘why was he so turned on he jumped me as soon as soon as I got there’.

“Talked about physics.” Some math, too – and Rodney’s definitely done the conversational foreplay thing before, but he hadn’t thought he’d been getting to John in quite that way. He’d wanted to think they’d been creating a connection, but an intellectual one or maybe an emotional one. Not one that necessarily ended with sex so good it broke the virtual bed.

The way Ronon says, “Well, he must be real into physics, then,” makes it plain that the only kind of talking he’d done with Sheppard had been physical and they can check the ‘also likes dudes’ box for him, at least as far as his subconscious goes.

Any small measure of hope the ‘into dudes’ revelation might have offered is immediately offset by the realization that he can’t actually make that assumption in relation to the Sheppard who lives in Atlantis and serves in the U.S. military. Trading the terrible restraints of the simulation for the differently terrible ones of DADT might not actually be an improvement when it comes to Rodney's chances. But there's no question he wants John out of there, no matter what else he might selfishly want for himself.

***

After John finally propositions him, Rodney emerges from the VR knowing one new thing for sure: he can’t go back in and have sex with John again. Not because there was anything wrong with the sex, per se, as sex - John had been just as good as advertised (and how). But because John hadn’t really chosen to have sex with _him_ , but with a construct of him. And the John making that choice hadn’t been the one he’d come to know and love, the one who’d offered him forgiveness and saved his life more times than he ever wanted to count, but a depressing shadow of him.

Which was too bad, since Rodney was now sure that he wanted to have as much sex with John Sheppard as he could fit in around taking great strides in theoretical physics and saving the universe whenever it needed it.

Which meant getting John out of there sooner rather than later.

The expression on his face is apparently enough to dissuade Teyla from asking for a report on the situation. She sticks to saying, “You will find a way to get him out, Rodney – or he will. He won’t be trapped in there forever.”

Rodney doesn’t really want sympathy so much as to just have a solution to the problem in hand already, “Yes, yes – I’m a genius; he’s stupidly lucky – when our powers combine, magic happens. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to find out what it’s doing to him the hard way first.”

But Teyla’s mention of forever has made him think of the Valley of the Ancients again – and that’s given him an idea for a new set of search strings which might prove fruitful. 

They don’t immediately, but the next time Rodney looks up from searching at the terminal he’s started to call home, he’s able to report that the device _is_ a variation on the Valley of the Ancients, a simulator meant to allow the Ancients to face their fears in a controlled environment, to help prepare them for Ascension. It’s basically a psychological flight simulator - which doesn’t even come close to being the craziest technology the Ancients have ever decided to create - and Rodney immediately dubs it the Ascension Trainer.

***

When Teyla emerges from the VR simulator for the first time, the first words out of her mouth are a frustrated, “He will not _listen_.”

Cadman has gone to acquire more alcohol and Zelenka is back in the lab taking a break from ‘being near Rodney and his insanity’ (Rodney, for the record, would not term his dedication insanity). So only Ronon and Rodney are around to witness this minor display of temper.

Rodney asks, “And that’s different from normal, how?”

And Teyla answers, sounding a bit more calm, “Normally he is willing to consider sense when others speak it.”

And, well, Rodney had to admit that was true.

Teyla continues before he can do more than nod, adds, “He did not proposition me – in fact, he at first thought that _my_ intentions were sexual. But he was not at all interested in discussing the habits he had fallen into. Or how he might improve his life if he just tried. Every time I tried to speak of it, he ordered more alcohol. I left before he could drink so much he hurt himself.”

“Would’ve served him right if you’d stayed,” Ronon says, sounding like he’d challenge John to a drinking contest himself right now - if that were a thing that could happen – and make him honor-bound to drink past all sense and reason.

“We cannot force him to change his mind, though. He has to work through this on his own - unfortunately. If he does not truly believe whatever it is that he needs to come to understand, the simulation will not release him. The database made this quite clear,” and even frustrated with John, Teyla will offer nothing but sense on his behalf. Rodney knows she'll end up right back in the simulation as soon as she deems herself calm enough to do so.

And that’s the true rub of it – they can enter the simulation in endless rotations, offer John support ‘til they’re blue in the face, keep this up until they’re all old and grey – but as things stand now, if John doesn’t have an actual change of heart he’ll grow old and grey in the pod, imprisoned there by his fear.

***

There aren’t any volunteers in the VR this time when the pop and hiss of a seal being broken breaks the silence. Rodney’s been staring at the source code for the Ascension Trainer, trying to find a way in that will allow them to extract John without any negative repercussions. He’s sure there must be a failsafe built in somewhere – even the Ancients usually weren’t crazy enough to refuse to account for emergencies.

For a moment, he thinks it’s an auditory hallucination, that he’s been trying to will the code into offering him a solution for so long that he’s punchy with it – but when he turns to look, the pod containing Sheppard _is_ turning back into a chair, canopy retracting as it transforms.

The first words out of Rodney’s mouth are, “You asshole – what’s it going to take to make you learn that touching Ancient tech without knowing what it does is a fucking stupid idea?” It’s been his worried mental mantra the entire time John was stuck in the simulation and seeing him emerge from it alive and well punches it out of Rodney on an overwhelming wave of relief.

“Maybe when it stops being such a crapshoot guessing what in the city’s going to turn out to be gene-activated? What am I supposed to do – never touch anything unless you’ve cleared it?” John volleys back, sounding sarcastically reasonable.

And Rodney can admit he has a point – Rodney being the one accidentally activating things wouldn’t be an improvement a lot of the time, not when, as they’ve already established, he’s usually much more useful being in a position to figure out how to deal with the problems caused by the errant tech. He’s not about to admit that, though, not when he’s still riding that adrenaline spike of relief and he can’t think of any better way to express it.

He says, pushing out his chin, stubborn, “Things that look like big, mechanical chairs tend to result in locking you into big, important systems. And, yes, sometimes that means we get lucky and you can control all the city’s shield’s defenses with the power of your brain, but that clearly isn’t something that can be counted on…”

John cuts in, then, and he completely has Rodney’s number, says, “Aww, Rodney, you missed me.” And, then, more sincere than he ever is, “I’m glad to be home, too.”

While Rodney’s still trying to recover from being emotionally knee-capped like that, John adds, looking thoughtful, “I figured out…a lot of things while I was in there. Might not have done it the easy way – and I’m not going to want to drink Miller for a good long while – but those were all my choices.” He sounds almost fierce for a moment, there, like he’s daring Rodney to mock his sincerity. Then he continues, “Couldn’t have done it without any of you guys. And, boy, am I going to have to do something big to make it up to Cadman.” And laughs.

Rodney’s so stuck on the ‘a lot of things’ followed by John saying he didn’t regret his choices that what comes babbling out of his mouth is, “Good thing they don’t stock shitty American beer in the Pegasus Galaxy, then.” And then, “You’ve got a lot of apology sparring sessions with Teyla in your future, too.”

John smiling at him, like Rodney giving him shit for his taste in beer is the best thing he's heard in days, well, it's the best thing Rodney's seen in hours, next to John emerging from the pod-chair, whole and undamaged; he's thinking he might be onto something, even if he hasn't quite summoned up the courage putting it into words requires.

**Author's Note:**

> Set in Season 2, post Duet, Aurora and Epiphany (and should possibly be considered somewhat AU from the rest of the series). Inspired by the format of the original fic - and the question it inspired: how could John get himself out of that situation? The dubious consent centers around the question of whether a person who doesn't have access to all their memories and thus isn't aware of all the people he has relationships with and who they are can provide adequate consent. Also mentions situational depression.


End file.
